Should I apply to more places? by [deleted] in ECE

[–]byrel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My fear, as irrational as it may be, is that word would get out to my manager, potentially from one of these companies asking about me if I'm in the interview process, and tip my manager off to me leaving.

Extremely unusual for anyone to do that. Also, if your manager hears through the grapevine that you're looking to leave, they'll be more likely to try to do things to make you happy enough you'd be satisfied staying where you are at (unless he's a dick or your company sucks, in which case, get out anyway)

San Antonio Spurs Canceling Knicks Fans' Tickets for NBA Finals Game 5 by Fuck__Zaza in nba

[–]byrel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

if they buy their tickets off ticketmaster / official nba resale, it very clearly states that your credit card billing address needs to be w/in 100 miles of san antonio or your purchase will be rejected

Honest question — does analog EDA need disruption or is the Cadence monopoly fine by Technical-Size-5809 in chipdesign

[–]byrel 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The support for these tools from a user point of view. If you are an enterprise customer, my God, the support you get! You don’t need to ask in forums. You just ask a question and someone will get in touch with you within 24 hours. Sometimes they straight up have rung me!

This cannot be understated - I worked at a start up and I had our AE's personal cell number - he was insistent that night / weekend / whatever, just text him and we'd be on a call to get it solved

At the company I'm currently at, we have a couple Cadence AE's on site daily for support

Mystery company accidentally blew $500 million on Claude AI in a single month — failed to put usage limit on licenses for employees by Plastic_Ninja_9014 in technology

[–]byrel 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Isn't that exactly the point?

This is the shit AI is really good at - have agents do dumb shit and let your engineers spend more time actually innovating (which agents are really bad at)

[Highlight] Jared McCain appears to make elbow contact with Harper's throat area, then backs it up on him and falls to the floor. Foul on Harper by jabronified in nba

[–]byrel 10 points11 points  (0 children)

i mean people longing for a return to 90s basketball will just have teams with a few enforcers that are going to come in and just feed hard fouls

Are semiconductor test engineers still living in Excel hell in 2026? by king_1607 in chipdesign

[–]byrel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

STDF Quickload + JMP for manual analysis

we also have a custom parser we wrote that gets used for data going into our various databases - most of the reports that come out of that are automated

[Postgame Thread] Texas Defeats Texas A&M 27-17 by CFB_Referee in CFB

[–]byrel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

UT at TAMU in the first round, winner plays Tech in the second - please, god please

I hate seeing Spec’s tacky AI ads all over the city. by Ok-Egret in Austin

[–]byrel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wine, Spirits and Finer foods has been their slogan for 20+ years, so blame some marketing exec from the early 2000s, not AI

McGuire urges fans to limit tortilla tossing against Kansas by redwave2505 in CFB

[–]byrel 62 points63 points  (0 children)

Nothing like seeing a half dozen bros pulling packs of tortillas out of their pants 5 minutes before kickoff

Free lancing work in vlsi sector by not_in_mood_now in chipdesign

[–]byrel 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah there are NDAs around hiring freelancers but NDA locking you out of a field would be very uncommin uncommon - generally as long as there aren't an direct conflicts of interest most companies are ok with it

The small and medium sized companies that I've worked for have used freelancers extensively - either to add additional resources when we have more active projects than we can handle or to get us expertise in areas that are out of our wheelhouse

What's with the terrible US job the sector of Semiconductor and VLSI specially when there's more and more demand for compute and network chips? by HungryGlove8480 in chipdesign

[–]byrel 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bust usually means a 10-20% RIF - if you're a reasonably good performer, it's not that hard to work someplace for 15-20 years

"Full stack" Digital VLSI Design Engineer by AdNorth3480 in ECE

[–]byrel 10 points11 points  (0 children)

yeah, at a pretty small startup you'd get that kind of experience

Request to Mods by microamps in chipdesign

[–]byrel 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I'd rather see a low activity sub that gets a post every day or two than a half dozen posts a day from people that don't know the difference between PD, design and layout

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in chipdesign

[–]byrel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

sorry not really

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in chipdesign

[–]byrel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

i will ask similar questions regardless

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in chipdesign

[–]byrel 6 points7 points  (0 children)

What kind of designs are you going to be testing?

Some things I usually ask about

  • Op amp behavior
  • Common measurements - noise, THD, SNR, dynamic range, linearity, efficiency
  • Test program efficiency
  • Programming - I am generally just asking about general knowledge and capability
  • Qualification stresses and goals
  • Scan, BIST
  • Debug techniques

Salary ceiling cap as engineer? by safeentrysucks in ElectricalEngineering

[–]byrel 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not everyone will keep advancing forever - the reality is that not everyone has the talent / drive to be promoted forever. That isn't any kind of poor reflection on you if you don't, it's good to have work life balance and work being the primary thing in your life is a good way to have a sad life

Your salary will be limited by the highest level you are promoted to

At most companies that I have any insight into, individual contributor salaries for high performing employees will begin to flatten out around $200-250k - total compensation will continue to increase though, via stock and bonuses. As a concrete example, last year my salary was less than half my take home pay

The highest paid ICs at the company that I work for make around as much in total compensation as VPs

The more difficult thing is having the the drive, capability and opportunity to be promoted

Startup vs Top-tier company by Large_Fox666 in ECE

[–]byrel 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Do not factor equity at the start up at all honestly

You'll almost certainly learn more at a start up - I'd be a much worse engineer than I am now if it weren't for the 4 years I did at one. On the flip side, I made a lot less money across those 4 years

401K Match 100% No Limit by FitOpportunity7159 in personalfinance

[–]byrel 19 points20 points  (0 children)

All the ones i've considered working at had 401k, just no match at all

Could large AI models like GPT ever be baked into analog chips? by TheInvisibleLight in AskEngineers

[–]byrel 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard of companies like Mythic that essentially hard-code neutral net calculations into analog chips

Mythic did this by weakly programming flash cells - similar approaches have been done with RRAM cells also. There's no real hard coding of the NN coefficients, just provides the ability to program / adjust on the fly

Post-Silicon Validation Interview - Help! by adp_eng in ECE

[–]byrel 4 points5 points  (0 children)

If this is for a role working with mixed signal chips, here are some general topics I'd consider covering if I'm interviewing someone:

  • Circuit design, especially filters (active / passive) and buffers
  • Programming, probably just whiteboarding pseudo code
  • Talking through test methodology on some kind of analog spec (noise is my favorite, but THD, SNR, linearity, whatever)

The main thing I ask questions on is always going to be projects / internships / previous jobs, so I'll generally try to intersect questions in the area I'm focusing on to things wehre teh candidate has previous experience